Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to controlling administration rights of computers in a network.
Description of the Related Technology
It is known to perform bench marking to ensure computer systems are secure. The US government, the Australian Government and Microsoft consider that four security controls mitigate against a large proportion of software intrusions. The four controls are
1) apply Operating System patches;
2) apply third party software patches;
3) allow only applications on a “white list” (i.e. a list of allowed or approved software), to run; and
4) limit administrator privileges.
A network of computers may have tens, or even hundreds or more, of computers and each computer may have a large number of programs installed on it. Also many users may have administrator rights granted for their computer. Some users may install software on their computers independently of the network management system. Also computers, for example laptop computers join and leave the network at random. To manually apply the controls to an existing network is a very difficult if not impossible task. The number of different application programs and different versions of the same program installed on a network is often very large. There is a need to provide software tools for controlling what software is allowed to run and who has administrator rights.